Title: The Foundations of Hope Online
Genre: Christian Fantasy MMORPG
Game Website: www.foundationsofhope.com
Company Website: www.lethalgamescorporation.com
Background:
The Foundations of Hope Online is the online game based on my Christian Young Adult Fantasy book series and is being marketed as a Christian Fantasy MMORPG.
I am hoping I am 6 months from going full Alpha and figured I'd start posting updates at MMORPG.com. Alpha to Beta should take less than 6 months after that. Currently FoHO is in pre-Alpha testing which means I am letting people into the world as I still build it. Pre-Alpha is all about creating the technology and the art while Alpha will be about testing the storyline, quests, etc. and Beta will be everything in full testing before going live. Right now pre-Alpha is all hack and slash because I am saving the quests last. As an author, the storyline is very important to me and I saved it for last. I have to first know what technology and art assets were implement so I can design the story around what I technology can do. But most of all I really want the quests to be an enjoyable journey into the game with a deep plot and it will take time to achieve that.
Storyline Intro:
From the back page of Book One: Faith of the Unforgotten
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Four hundred years into the future, after the Great Pulse Storms began, the civilizations on Earth have managed to stay alive and cope with the changes that were dealt to them. The Great Pulse Storms have made it impossible for electricity to exist, and the ionic atmosphere from the Storms ignites nearly all explosive substances. Overnight, the Storms had set the civilizations back to a medieval-like time, and only the strong and knowledgeable survived. But the potential for humans to remain alive and free on the planet will once again be tested.
Dragons have returned from a time of old, and an intelligent lizard species from within the Earth is waging war upon the upper land-dwelling humans in an effort to take their lands and take the humans as slaves. The merciless enemy is stronger, quicker and more intelligent than humans, and all looks to be lost for the descendants of the Heroes of Sorms.
Rebekah Ann Smith, a spirited, fifteen-year-old innkeeper's daughter, has been placed at the forefront of the battle for the existence of their lands and lives. Rebekah and a small, scattered group are all that stand as a chisel against a mountain that is ready to fall. All they have left is hope that their faith can move that mountain, and hope that the Gifts given to them by their God can cut through the falling boulders of human desolation.
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Game Intro:
The Foundations of Hope Online game will place a player in the middle of the Saurian(lizard creatures) and Human battle. The storyline of the game will run along side the storyline of the series. Players will not play characters from the book, but the characters from the book will pop up every now and then(GMs). FoHO will be part Realm vs Realm and the rest PvE. Players will choose to be either a Human, Saurian, or a dragon. Yes, even as a dragon. The game will take place in a future medieval North America and will have many zones taking place in areas such as Lansing, Detroit, Chicago, New York, the Grand Canyon, the bayous, and the everglades. North America will be divided into two realms. The Saurians control the southern half and the humans control the north. Each of these realms will be split into either PvP or PvE zones. PvE players may have to cross into another realm's PvE zones, but they will not be forced into PvP action.
During the physical battles, there is another battle going on that humans can deal with if they go that route, the Spiritual Warfare aspect. My goal for the game is to not make a 'preachy' game, but acceptable to mainstream and Christian-gamers. It is a very very thin line, but I have done it with my books, and I am confident I can do it with the game. I personally would never play a preachy game, so I stay far away from that. So moreso I am making a Christian-acceptable game. For example, the human 'magic' is replaced by Gifts given by God. They still will have abilities of swords of fire, lightning strikes, 'fire from heaven', etc. Is that overly preachy to a gamer? No. Is it Christian-acceptable? Yes. Everybody wins. While most of the earthly zones are normal standard locations(mountains, desert, bayous, canyons, etc) the Spiritual Warfare zones will be very dark and if you see the screenshots below, very unpreachy.
FoHO will have both a low-end and high-end client. Players will be able to play on older computers or players can turn on shaders and play with the eyecandy it'll be their choice using the same client. There will also be a Windows and MacOS client.
The base game will start in North America. From there, expansions using the other continents are planned. Besides having a game expansion for each continent, I have recently started thinking about releasing new books in the series based on the different continents.
The FoHO Project Tracker can be found here:
http://www.foundationsofhope.com/mantis/roadmap_page.php
I was torn on whether I would release the Project Tracker to the public. In the end, I decided players get to see what all has been done to the game and what is still on the agenda. But I also decided on letting it be public to also give players visibility in what will be added into the new expansions.
Upcoming blogs:
I have alot of catching up to do here but will split the highlight features into seperate blogs. Here are some planned upcoming blog updates.
-Playing as a Dragon. Fly, fight, and bring terror to the land!
-Underwater zones
-Game guis
-Christian Fantasy MMO. Can it be done?
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Marketing:
Provided are the covers showing how the game is being marketed in the bookstores.
http://www.foundationsofhope.com/screenshots/fotu/fotu_paperback_72.jpg
http://www.foundationsofhope.com/screenshots/itd/itd_paperback_72.jpg
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Here are just a few of my favorite pics, but you can find the rest at.
http://www.foundationsofhope.com/screenshots.php
Any game can succeed if it is done right,thing is i don't get the feel of a christian game here?Unless you are talking about the Crusaders lol.
Tue Jan 27 2009 2:26PMThis could be an interesting angle and you don't have to make it a ministry. I would be interested in hearing more about it.
Thoughts in my brain when I saw your blog..
Would the game provide interesting information in regards to the christian faith? Ex: a tome of knowledge (in this game would be: Your avatars personal Bible! )
All the "answers" your avatar needs to survive in the game is to be found in the Bible. (Just like in the real world). As far as the game is concerned, Bible unlocks new skills, abilities and knowledge for the players avatar. In the process, again without being a ministry, educate parallels with contemporary Christianity. Suppose a character unlocks an ability - Excorsise. The player not only gets a new skill but learns a little history of Exorcisms in the Christian faith. How they were performed, who did them, etc.
For those skeptical about "monsters" in the Christian based world. Lots of em :
http://www.monstropedia.org/index.php?title=Christian_demonology
and from one of those "books banned from the Bible - The Book of Enoch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Enoch
Tue Jan 27 2009 3:34PMDon't go the Wisdom Tree route of saying, here's a cheesy and stupid game, but it's a Christian Brand (TM) cheesy and stupid game, so please buy it anyway. And then marketing it to parents who don't know any better as don't let your kids play those evil Mario and Zelda games; buy these Christian games for them to play instead, even though the kids likely won't actually play the games much even if you do buy them because they're cheesy and stupid.
A "Christian" game should not be preachy and obnoxious; that hardly glorifies God. Rather, make a good, quality game, and where you could put in gratuitously offensive content, don't. Make armors that look more like armor than lingerie, don't load up the game on foul language (actually most games don't do that), and so forth. If so inclined, Civlization IV demonstrated that it's even possible to directly quote from the Bible on a number of occasions without coming across as preachy--provided that it fits well into the game and you're not trying to force it where it shouldn't go. (Or maybe not translating it from Swahili was their trick.)
From your comments that you're trying not to make a preachy game, you might well agree with that. But the problem I see is that your game seems to lack a point (or if there is a point, you didn't explain it), other than being a "Christian" game. When a game's presentation starts with storyline and artwork rather than game mechanics, that's usually a very bad sign.
If you don't have some gameplay idea of where you want to go with a game, you'll probably end up making a mediocre clone of some other game(s)--in the vernacular, a "WoW-clone". If you do that, there's not much reason for people to play your game instead of whatever other games you tried a little too hard to copy.
Tue Jan 27 2009 6:02PMFrom what I have been learning on their website it seems the game is based on the books by the blog author. He does have excerpts of his book on the website and the work does not seem of the variety that you may come across in bathroom stalls or conveinence stores (Are you sure that you are going to heaven?). It is a genuine story with some religous theme sprinkled in. I will look into it more.
Tue Jan 27 2009 8:36PMSo, can you use Jesus in the game? I don't mean to be skeptical, but from what I know Jesus wasn't much of a fighter...
Tue Jan 27 2009 8:37PMNice idea's but lose the Christian theme in my opinion. The last thing you need is the Church rising against you.
Also, Christian gaming is as funny as Christian servers on Call of Duty. Christians and games do not work together well. You live in a fantasy life while playing a game instead of focusing on the real world and helping people. You are subjected to the rudest people on the planet multiple times in one sitting. It will have an effect.
A rose by any other name is still a rose. Your going to have magic in the game, but just call it something else. You have created powers and are saying that God Almighty is letting people use them. Yeah that will go over well.
It's interesting, but why not go with hell on Earth instead of dragons?
Tue Jan 27 2009 8:39PMThanks for the feedbacke everybody.
@dcostello,
Good points to make for my Christian fantasy MMO blog.
@Sargoth,
While the game is really just toned down to be Christian-acceptable, my books are classified as Christian fantasy and the game does have Christian references. Because of that I'm not going to have people think I'm trying to trick them into a religious game. I'd rather say it straight out and everybody knows straight up what to expect.
My books use the same premise of using Gifts from God instead of using magic.
I'm not sure the reference of dragons in the last comment. In my books and in the game, dragons are just physical intelligent creatures. They have nothing to do with any Spiritual Warfare style. They are the a third realm that players can choose from to fight against the humans and Saurians(lizard species). On the Christian side some will say dragons are evil and should not be playable, but to me, they are just a intelligent creatures that can be either good or evil.
Tue Jan 27 2009 10:09PMChristians and mass murder go hand-in-hand. Epic win.
and a big YEAH for sleestaks! They are the coolest.
The nicest thing I can say about the screenshots is that the water looks nice, but this project has epic fail. Even the lord can't save this... if he existed, which he doesn't. But yeah, good luck with that.
Wed Jan 28 2009 3:54AM@DeadDingo,
Well in my book series the humans in general(religion was outlawed) are being slaughtered by a more technological advance species. So the humans are in defense trying to save their lands and their lives. Just a little different.
I agree, if I was marketing this trying to compete with the mainstream games, I would not have a chance. But my focus is on a targeted untapped niche market. And even then the likely hood is slim. That is why nobody is willing to try. If anything, it has been a fun and educational journey.
Wed Jan 28 2009 10:38AMHang in there Leathel. We need fresh indie development in the MMO industry. Take points of view like DeadDingo as learning experiences like marketing feedback. What I take from his comment is that the minute you put out Christian fantasy genre MMO, you will get the mocking from the morally challenged. Just because your game has foundations of Christian morals in it, people will think your game is about morals. Which it is not. I also believe you would still have to make yourself standout from other MMOs though.
Wed Jan 28 2009 11:46AMI resent the morally challenged comment. May you burn in hell for that you hypocrit. Crap on a gilded stick is still crap.
I am happy religion has been banned in your fiction. It's about time. :)
MMo's are not typically 'christian' vehicles and by nature are about killing. That's not a very christian theme... well, unless you count the crusades. So, who is morally challenged?
But sleestaks are still cool.
Wed Jan 28 2009 12:12PMKeep up the good work Leathel, I want to be playing this by next year. :)
((Is that RealmCrafter?))
Wed Jan 28 2009 12:59PMEnough with the silly accusations of hypocrisy, DeadDingy. Hypocrisy has a meaning, and making a statement with which you personally disagree isn't it.
"To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven... a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up... a time to love, and a time to hate, a time of war, and a time of peace." -Ecclesiastes 3:1, 3, 8
God is not some pushover pacifist idiot. He's well aware that there are times when it is necessary to kill. A number of particular examples are given in the history of Israel. Unless, of course, you believe that the Bible is "not a very christian theme".
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But I still think the game needs to have a point, apart from merely being "Christian-acceptable". Quite a few secular games are inoffensive to most Christians, including some really good games. I've yet to see a rant on the evils of Super Mario World, Tetris, or Wii Sports, which are some of the best selling games of all time.
Wed Jan 28 2009 2:03PMI'll be keeping an eye on this.
Thu Jan 29 2009 1:29AM@AlloughN,
FoHO is Torque based.
@Quizzical,
Thu Jan 29 2009 5:11PMI am not sure of what point you are looking for. Can you give an example from another MMORPG of what you mean? The primary point of creating the game isn't to make a Christian-acceptable game. The primary point is that the game is based around my book series and uses a future medieval Earth as its location. As stated, I can't give an overview of the game plot yet, that will be worked in later. But it is very important to me so that the players feel they are in the same world as the books and both tie together nicely. That is why Alpha will be purely on focusing on the quests and storyline of the game. The fact that the game has a Christian undertone is due the fact that that is how my books are.
Keep it up, I am definitely waiting for this game to come out.
Everyone out there badmouthing the game, please stop, if you don't like it, say so, but do so constructively. all this talk about his being a hypocrite? PLEASE! C.S. Lewis was one of the greatest and most respected Christian Writers of his time and his books had plenty of monsters demons and violence in them. There is nothing hypocritic about this game in the least. there are hundreds of Christian Authors who write books that are thoroughly doused in this type of content, from magic, to prophetic gifts, to blood, gore, and even seduction. it is how they use the content that makes it Good or Bad.
again, keep it up, I am sure this game is going to be good, if not great! Can't wait!
my only question is this, I may be wrong, but Alpha versions are typically limmited as to who gets on them correct? How do I get on that list?
Fri Mar 27 2009 6:46PMHi Wayebrynn,
Just create an account at the game website and sign up in the forums under General Game Information. I have been letting everybody in so far. The only reason it is closed Alpha is so that I can control not getting flooded with bug reports, suggestions, etc.. if too many people did sign up.
Fri Mar 27 2009 9:30PMMMORPG.com writes:
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